Higher or lower? One wrong answer ends it.
Outrank is a geography higher or lower game. Two countries face off on one statistic — population, land area, population density or life expectancy. You can see the first country’s figure; decide whether the second country’s is higher or lower. The daily challenge is up to ten comparisons, the same for everyone, starting with clear-cut match-ups and finishing with close calls. One wrong answer ends the day: get five in a row to win, and all ten for a perfect day. Unlimited mode is an endless chain: every right answer moves the new country into the first seat and brings in another, and one wrong answer ends your streak. All figures come from the World Bank and are for the same year.
The very first daily, Outrank #1, shows how a run builds. It opened on population: New Zealand, 5.29 million, against Spain. Spain is plainly bigger, so the answer is higher, and the reveal shows 48.8 million, 9.2 times as many. Spain then moves into the first seat and Lebanon comes in: lower, at 5.81 million. Then the statistic switches to land area, Lebanon’s 10,230 km² against Burkina Faso: higher, at 273,600 km². The early questions are meant to be clear-cut like this.
The later ones are not. Question seven asked whether Croatia is more densely populated than China, with its 150 people per km². It is not: Croatia has 69. The last question asked whether Mauritius is more densely populated than the Netherlands, at 534 people per km². Most people say lower, but Mauritius has 623, 17% more. Under the daily’s sudden-death rule, a slip on that last question still leaves nine in a row and a comfortable win. The same slip on question four ends the day at three, one short of the five you need.
Each statistic needs a different instinct. Population follows what you know about big countries, but it is easy to underrate fast-growing ones in Africa and Asia. Land area catches people out because the familiar world map stretches countries far from the equator, so northern countries look much bigger than they are. Density is the hardest, because it combines the two: small places with crowded cities top the list, which is why an island like Mauritius beats the Netherlands. Life expectancy tends to split richer and poorer countries, with Japan, at 84.0 years, near the very top.
Look at the first figure before you think about the second country. A first country with an unusually high or low figure makes the answer close to certain, and the danger is in the middle of the range. In the daily, every answer becomes the next question’s first figure, so a mistake never carries over, but each new statistic needs a fresh look rather than momentum.
Every day there are ten comparisons, the same for everyone and in the same order, refreshed at midnight UK time. The countries form a chain — each comparison’s second country becomes the next one’s first — and the statistic changes as you go, so a single day mixes population, land area, density and life expectancy. The first questions are clear-cut; the last few are close calls between countries you might never have thought to compare. You get one guess per comparison, and the first wrong answer ends the day: five in a row counts as a win, and all ten is a perfect day.
Every figure comes from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (licence CC BY 4.0) and is for the same reference year, 2024, so no comparison ever mixes years or definitions. Population (indicator SP.POP.TOTL) is the mid-year estimate of everyone living in the country, whatever their citizenship, from the UN World Population Prospects and national statistics offices. Land area (AG.LND.TOTL.K2, from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization) excludes inland water such as lakes and major rivers — which is why the United States has more land than Canada, even though Canada is larger in total area.
Population density (EN.POP.DNST) is people per square kilometre of land area, as published by the World Bank rather than recomputed: for Georgia and Moldova the population figure excludes territory outside government control, and the published density divides by the matching land area. Life expectancy (SP.DYN.LE00.IN) is life expectancy at birth — how long a newborn would live if the current year’s death rates held throughout their life.
The game covers 198 places: the 193 UN member states, Palestine and Kosovo, plus Hong Kong, Macau and Puerto Rico. Dependent territories with fewer than 500,000 people are left out, and a country only appears for a statistic the World Bank publishes for it — Nicaragua and Kosovo have no 2024 land area, so they never appear in land-area or density questions. A few places are not covered by the World Bank at all, including Taiwan, Vatican City and Western Sahara. Values are compared at the precision shown on screen; two figures that read the same would count as a tie, accepting either answer, but the game never deliberately serves one.